When Kelsey wrote that "the average defender at Bridge operates in a fog of uncertainty", he was one hundred percent right in accurately picturing the mind of the average defender who makes elementary mistakes, lacking the habitual application of mind to the situation at hand with his errors accumulating for want of logical thinking and the failure to concentrate throughout in counting to draw simple inferences which could help in defeating more contracts than what came his way as a result of blunders in the play of the hand.
Unless the defender shirks of the mental laziness and makes it a habit to count and watch closely every pip of the card played, he is likely to remain static in his standard of Bridge as defender. The bidding tells its own tale to count declarer's tricks opting for passive or active defense. A simple illustration to start with will set the defender to think on the right track. Say you are west holding the following hand:
The bidding goes as under:
When you lead the AD from your hand as under, the following dummy spreads before you as north:
Declarer plays low from dummy; partner plays the 4D; declarer the 3D from hand. How would you continue in your effort to defeat the 4H contract bid? Here the bidding is too obvious in describing south's hand - at least holding 10 cards in the major suits which leave him with most likely 3 cards in the minors. The dummy's 13 high card points added to your 7 is half the deck. Declarer's independent bid of major suits to the game level indicates an almost opening hand of 12 - 13HCP, which can leave your partner with at most 7 - 8 high card points. If declarer's jump of 3S is to be believed, his spade holding of 5 - 6 cards must be with the remaining honours, i.e. KQ. Likewise his 4H bid should have top honour's, either the AK or AQ. This would mean that your partner is most likely to be holding the ace of clubs if your defense has some chance of beating the contract: But the AK of clubs and the ace of diamonds add up to only 3 tricks which are not enough. Hence the wishful positive thinking of giving partner a hopeful trick in trumps which only can then break the contract of 4H.
Leading the AD, you regret seeing dummy's strong holding of diamonds - especially the conveniently placed KD. What inference do you get from it? You see if south's minor holding of 3 cards is 2 diamonds and a singleton club the contract cannot be beaten for then he has one club loser, one diamond loser and let's say a trump loser.
But now let's reverse his holding of the minor cards giving him 2 clubs and a singleton diamond, what now? Yes unless you cash in on your club winners, declarer is likely to discard one of this club loser on the now active KD winner now that you have led the AD as your opening lead. The defense is now clear as an open book. You cannot waste any time in cashing your clubs assuming your partner holds the ace of clubs. Hence the proper defense at trick 2 lies in switching to the 3C. For the average defender this may be a difficult thing to do from a holding of KC, staring at the QJ of clubs in dummy.
But this is the only correct defense and the fallacy of thinking what if declarer holds the ace of clubs should be discarded as faulty logic. For in that case declarer was anyway discarding his club loser on the KD. So you lose nothing by leading low club from your holding of KC. South's actual hand was as under:
The lesson to remember here is that counting declarer's hand is a worthwhile exercise.
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10 7 6 3
10 2
A 9 8 5
K 6 3
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North 1NT / South 3S
North 3NT / South 4H
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All Pass
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North
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A J
J 7 5 2
K J 6 2
Q J 9 4
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South
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K Q 9 5 2
A K 8 6 4
3
10 7
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